Advertisement
Day 10
Today was all about getting reorganised for the trip North into the cooler, but still muggy weather and our visit to the hill tribe countryside and tea plantations. We arranged to meet at 8.30am so as usual, I was up about 6am getting organised and of course wanted to ensure the latest blog was up for you to read.
This trip turned out to have a turn of events as we visited some caves on the way called Phra Non Cave at a place called Wat Tum Chiang Dao. The entrance to the cave was administered by the Buddhist of Thailand as once again they seem to be everywhere making money for the Buddhists and that allows them to build and maintain their ornate temples.
The Caves were enormous and I fear much more expansive than Waitomo but of the same ilk. Maybe the difference is that the stalagmites and tites were not as clean or maybe not even made from limestone like ours are. These particular caves were discovered in 13
th century and have been home to Buddhists shrines ever since. The amount of work that has gone into the making of the shrines inside
the temple would indicate that they have been around a long long time. The detail was mind boggling and the amount of statues and carvings in places you would not conceive to be possible, like tucked up into far reaching corners and shelves where no access seemed possible, but I saw them there with the naked eye.
Sadly, most of the photos I have did not come out, but Emma who is the lass in the forefront of the photo with me standing next to the tall staunch guy with the phallic symbol in his hand, has an extremely fancy camera and she may be willing to share some of her photos. In the meantime you have mine to drool over.
The caves have only been available to the public for about 60 or 70 years. Just before you go into the caves though there is a stream with a small bridge across it (and a series of yet more steps leading into the caves) and in the stream are a wide variety of fresh water fish that would make any fisherman drool. Most of them were at least a metre long and although some were catfish others
reminded me of very overgrown tadpoles. As they ask you to buy fish food to feed them I daresay they are protected here and no available for catching?
Even though the caves were a surreal experience to the beholder, to try to explain what it was like down there is nigh on impossible other than to say that it would have been very dark down there if they had not had lighting at regular intervals. We just did the direct route for 320 metres, but there were other caves that other people can explore and for a small fee you can hire a tilly lamp to do this or I suppose if you had your own torch you could use that instead.
The trip north took us about four hours in an air conditioned minivan and if you did not understand the driving habits of the Thai people would have made most peoples’ hair either grey or standing on end by the end of the journey. If the driver had driven in NZ like he did here we would have had a road accident every few kilometres. We drove on the wrong side of the road often, passed
cars on the inside, drove over double yellow lines, speed through town, passed cars when there was very close oncoming traffic and instead of slowing to go around blind corners he just tooted his horn. The van had no guts to get us up into the hill country so the engine heated up and we had to open the windows of the van and get our fresh air this way so that the engine could cool down.
When we arrived at our accommodation we were greeted in Thai and English and a cup of hot green tea was waiting for us. Much more astringent than what we would expect at home. I have taken two photos of the accommodation here as we are up in the hill country in a small village called Maesalong. The pictures are taken at 180 angles to each other. Our room is big enough for two beds, with a toilet and the shower is in the toilet so I expect we will put the lid down on the toilet to shower. Of yes we do have one modern appliance and that is a Samsung tv. I assume it is in colour. Still this is
not a complaint. Although the accommodation is quite Spartan it is clean.
Now, this will definitely be the last blog until after the tramp as tomorrow we head off for three days into the jungle. No snakes I am told.
Soon I will go for a walk. Take care everyone and thank you for reading my blog and your kind words of support.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0574s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Jennie
non-member comment
What an adventure!